FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Vegetarian cookbook makes its 'gourmet' dishes simple
Here's a cookbook title I bet you never thought you'd hear: "The Vegetarian 5-Ingredient Gourmet" (Broadway Books, $15.95).
In the average person's mind, neither vegetarian nor gourmet preparations lend themselves to such super-simple treatment, but author Nava Atlas takes advantage of high-quality, nutrition-oriented prepared foods to prove our preconceptions wrong. This paperback version of the book originally released in 2001 has been updated to include vegan options throughout.
The recipes are accompanied by nutritional breakdowns (calories, fat, protein, carbs, cholesterol and sodium) and there are short introductions to less-well-known ingredients. Most of the ingredients, however, don't require a special trip to the gourmet shop or health-food store.
Some examples: Vegetable lasagna made with no-boil noodles, bottled sauce, steamed veggies (your choice), ricotta and mozzarella; tofu-and-sweet-potato curry made with baked sweet potatoes, diced firm tofu, curry powder, low-sodium canned tomatoes and a little baby spinach or arugula; salsa and goat cheese wraps made with green salsa, flour tortillas and spreadable goat cheese.
The rigidity of the five-ingredient format means Atlas isn't free to make some additions that might heighten the appeal of the recipes, or improve technique. But that wouldn't stop you from deciding the dish would be better if the garlic was sauteed first, for example. On the other hand, the five-ingredient format almost assures a more nutritious treatment because the recipe is pared down to essential ingredients with no room for fat- or calorie-rich embellishments.
Two other vegetarian books among new cookbook releases caught my eye: "The Vegetarian Family Cookbook," also by Atlas, and "The Artful Vegan," from Millennium, San Francisco's acclaimed vegetarian restaurant.
"The Vegetarian Family Cookbook" (Broadway, paper, $17.95) opens with valuable information: lists of the 10 most contaminated crops and the 10 foods to buy organic, a discussion of margarine vs. butter, a note pointing to ingredients Atlas is highlighting for their nutritional value and usefulness (such as flax seed, seitan, tempeh, whole-wheat pastry flour and natural granulated sugar).
Atlas offers suggestions throughout the book for how to make a recipe into a complete meal, how to embellish it (particularly, how to make a dish more attractive to sophisticated adult tastes, or how to tailor it for children) and how to make it more palatable for finicky eaters. She is time-conscious and often offers a guideline of how much active cooking time the recipes take, as well as providing vegan options, with nutritional breakdowns both for dairy and vegan versions. This might be a good beginner's book for a household flirting with vegetarianism, or one in which a single member is vegetarian.
"The Artful Vegan" (10 Speed Press, $24.95) is another approach altogether. The recipes are very advanced, many involving several sub-recipes, with a lot of less familiar ingredients. The focus is on the vegetable or grain as the centerpiece of the plate, with treatments that resemble those of meat dishes in conventional restaurants (roasting, dressing with an intensely flavored reduction, and so on). This one is for foodies who just like to read about great food, or for those with a vast amount of cooking experience and a home kitchen that resembles a TV cooking show set.
